How to Successfully Manage Bad Press

Too many cooks will always spoil your broth, and try as you might, teaching new tricks to old dogs is an entirely futile enterprise. However, in spite of the wisdom of some old adages, the idea that "All Publicity is good Publicity" can definitely be tossed into the "ignore" pile by anyone pursuing a serious career in PR. If you're working for any substantial length of time in public relations, there will be occasions when you have to deal with bad press, so reputation management is a skill which you need to learn. There is no one-size-fits-all strategy, since bad press can come in all shapes and sizes, but these four pointers will help you to remain calm and give you time to focus on next steps...

1. Make sure key players are informed

No matter what the size of your company, or your client's company, you should have a PR plan. This should include a crisis management section which will detail the procedures which are taken whenever there is a risk of bad press. Top item on the plan ought to be who needs to be kept informed. Typically, this will be all senior management, and often it will include all members on the communications/marketing team. If this is a lot of individuals, it might even be worth setting up an email group, so that when you do have a crisis you can alert everyone quickly. As press officer, it is your responsibility not only to inform them at the onset of a crisis, but also any key developments and also further press coverage as it occurs.

2. Ensure that employees direct journalist calls to the correct spokespeople

Depending on the number of employees and the amount of clout your company has, journalists may try a number of different methods to speak to an insider about what is going on. This could be sketchy, since other members of the team may not know the ins and outs of the story, or your official company line, and it is easy even for media trained personnel to be flustered by questions. As a part of your day to day strategy, every member of staff should be aware who the press officer is, so that they are able to field any press enquiries. However, when a crisis occurs, it is essential to remind everyone that media enquiries should be directed to the appropriate team member. Having said this, it is important that all members of staff are kept up to date with key developments in any crisis. A successful internal communications strategy will send out updates to all members of staff which give them the information they need.

3. Have a statement ready to go

If the phone starts ringing and emails are flying, even the most experienced of PROs can become flustered. That is why it is useful to have a written statement ready to go to media. The benefits of a written quote are twofold. Firstly, having a written documentation of all of the media you have spoken to will make it easier to track who you have been dealing with. This will be important when the crisis is over since you may want to let those people know some good news, and the journalists will appreciate being kept in the loop as developments happen. Secondly, it avoids a lengthy or difficult telephone conversation which may see you having to deal with awkward questions.

4. Balance it with some good PR

Here's a maxim to believe in: "All Good Publicity is Good Publicity". It's not rocket science, and maybe you can think of it as the yin and yang of PR, but after you've had a crisis it's a good idea to sit down and think about what is great about your company. Unearth the charity work that staff have been involved in, find a real life story about how your product has really made someone's day, or if you're really stuck, just write a press release about how the crisis has been resolved and what procedures have been put into place to protect you and your customers from a similar crisis. If you can get some senior spokespeople to lend their voice to this good news, then it is even better, as it gives more credibility to the story.

Whatever type of PR you are in, you will have to handle bad press at some point in your career. It can be unpleasant, although for some people, this type of reputation management can be one of the highlights of the job. Each case is different, and you learn as you go along, but by remembering those four points, you are well on the way to handling bad press in a professional way.

Choosing a Web Designer

Many small business owners struggle with deciding on how to make the right choice for designing their website. They search the web for help with their website and find that the choice is harder than they thought. Currently there are (literally) millions of websites who claim to be professional web designers. However, one must be careful in choosing the right person or people in which to trust their company image. In this article, I will attempt to categorize web designers into manageable groups, and teach the reader the difference between the types.

Web designers fall into four general categories: freelance amateur, freelance professional, Web Design Company, Web Development Firm.

Freelance Amateur

The majority of web designers you will come across, especially searching the Internet, are freelancers. That is, individuals who do web design but are not employed by a web design company. Some are self-employed professionals but most of these freelancers are amateur-hobbyist types. They find a copy of FrontPage™ came with their MS Office™ Suite. They discovered how fun it could be to make web pages so they started telling their friends that they could "design" web pages.

The "pros" of using an amateur is that they are very cheap. The "cons" are too numerous to mention, but I'll point out a few. They have no training; they have little knowledge of what makes a good website work; they do not understand HTML code or CSS but only FrontPage point and click; they do not understand general design and layout concepts and they have little real experience. The biggest reason they should be avoided for the serious businessperson, is that their work looks amateurish, which makes your company look amateurish. Who wants that?

Freelance Professional

A professional is often defined by simply being paid. People think that if you are paid for something, then you are professional. Maybe that's true in the Olympics, but for the business services world, you are not a professional until you are established and respected as one by your clients and peers. Freelancer professional web designers are a giant leap from the amateur in that they have established a portfolio of respectable work. They have some sort of qualified training and experience and they have credentials that can be verified by contacting references. They have a good reputation with their clients and other professionals. In general, a good freelance professional web designer can be good person to have doing your site. But they are hard to distinguish from the amateur when you are just searching the web.

The upside is, if you find a good one they are significantly cheaper than a web design company. But that is usually the only upside. If the budget limits you, then a freelancer will do for a small project. But anything seriously important should be left to a professional company.

Some downsides to using a freelance pro are that they are usually part-time, meaning they are limited in how much time they can devote to your project. They are also limited in what they can do for you. Most freelancers are specialists in one area and generalists in everything else. Some have no skills in anything except their one specialty and often you will have to find others to fill roles. In addition, freelancers are not always cheap although many of them are aspiring to create their own company; some are highly sought after and charge $100 per hour or more for their work. My advice here is, if you have that much to spend, go with a company that has a team of professionals to get the job done in a timelier manner.

Web Design Company

This is the next step beyond a freelance professional. The web design company offers the "whole show". They provide real project management and have pulled together a team of web experts to get a wider range of jobs done. A company can provide a much higher level of expertise in web design, programming, content development and more.

Such a company is usually very small, yet large enough to handle larger scale projects. Compared to the most highly qualified freelancer, a company has a diversity of talent and collaboration working for them. The end-result is usually a much higher quality product.

The only real drawbacks are on the one hand, the web design company is more expensive than a freelancer because there are many more people on the job. However, you get what you pay for rings true. On the other hand, for very large projects or long term development, web design companies may be too small and usually do not have the human recourses to accommodate that $500,000 contract. In the end, for serious business people looking for quality and professionalism and who can't afford the big firm, this is the way to go.

Web Development Firm

As the title implies, a web development firm is like any traditional company. They have a staff of office workers, they have owners and officers, and they have a team of talented professionals who are paid a good salary for their work. They often have a sales force that do inside and outside sales. The quality of their work goes without saying, as you could not be so well-established by doing shoddy work. These firms offer teams of very talented professionals who work on your project and get the job done in a timely and extremely efficient manner. Additionally, they usually cover all aspects of website development including marketing and advertising. They may have teams of specialists that they can deploy to your location and work in-house under a temporary contract. The possibilities are endless.

If price is not an issue and the highest quality work is necessary, then this is who you want to do the job. For smaller budget businesses, a quote from an established web development firm might knock you off your chair, but know that companies who have project requirements that reach hundreds of thousands of dollars know the score. Thus, the only real drawback for a web development firm is that they are usually very expensive. Then again, cost is relative and bigger companies like to work with bigger companies.

In summary, the choice is yours. I would recommend for the serious businessperson, that you budget a decent amount of dollars to properly design and execute a professional website. I would avoid the amateur and outsource to an individual or company with good experience and reasonable rates to create my web presence. If money were no object, then I would only deal with established firms and pay the big bucks to get the job done right and done well.